The Hungry Mind

A hundred pages into Hungry Tide, I have made up my mind - visit Sunderbans. When?, is a good question.
There is something about books, that makes me feel inferior. Especially, books I haven't read. When I go to Crossword, I am bombarded with fits of self-indignation, because there are so many books, so many best-sellers just waiting to be picked up and flipped. So many of them holding words of poetry and passion, re-takes and retributions, giving forms and words to things hitherto unsaid in my mind.
It's 4 am and I am allowed a bit of nostalgia. 
I remember early school days when I used be in a books circuit. We had a complex network, with even more complex rules of give and take for all the Enid Blytons and Agatha Christies we could lay our hands on. I did manage to read quite a handful of them. I fell in love with Timmy, and I would actually envy the elaborate gastronomical arrangements accompanying every outing. Some of Agatha Christie's are timeless. Didn't like much of her detective series though, liked the stand-alone novels more. There were the occasional classics, some of which I read on my English teacher's recommendation. My first "fat" novel was The Scarlet Pimpernel. Not easily forgotten, I still remember I was completely taken in by the romanticism. After this, fat books were no longer the dreaded territory. Kim, Great Expectations, Heidi, are still fresh in my mind. Though often rebuked for it, I did read hordes of Hardy Boys and Nancy Drews and even some of their combo missions. Harry Potter Series and Lord of the Rings followed soon.
Then I stopped. The so-called entrance examination preparation chucked out all these frivolities.
I am happy to be getting back to what I best suck at - my social skills :D. Books are the best excuses to seclusion, and then you can even pass the rare sagacious comment a la Fountainhead or An Equal Music.
This is unending. Right now, I am holding steady to at least a couple of novels and 4-5 books of non-fiction. Happy. :)